


Unscathed

by fid_gin



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 08:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6276673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where an emotionally distressed Beth decides she needs a tattoo</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unscathed

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally write AUs, but I wanted Daryl to give Beth a tattoo, dammit, and it just wouldn't work any other way. Triggery for suicide and cutting, so beware.
> 
> Also, it may seem a little unlikely that Daryl knows about Boudica...except it doesn't, because I keep thinking of him knowing the legend of the Cherokee Rose - he likes to read, and he absorbs information. And he loves him some strong ass women. ;)

Beth Greene’s life changes because of demons and scars. Oddly enough though, for once they aren’t her own.

***

She’s minding her business on the way to choir practice, walking purposefully in high-heeled boots and thinking about trying, again, to kill herself. Thinking about probably maybe _doing_ it this time – her heart wasn’t in it years ago when she tried after her mom’s death, but since her dad was killed by a drunk driver last week it’s entered her head again. It keeps her up at night. _I want to **go**._

A newly mounted flash of neon catches her eye, blinking from a storefront window in the shape of an ornate dragon and the words DIXON BROTHERS TATTOO CO. As she passes, she catches a glimpse of (presumably) one of the eponymous Dixon brothers inside seated next to a woman, bent close to her arm with his back to the glass so all she can see is stringy brown hair and a shit-kicker motorcycle jacket with angel wings on the back. When he sits back to wipe blood and ink away from the line he’s etched into the lady’s forearm, he turns around and looks out the window and their eyes meet briefly – just long enough for Beth to register feral eyes and a fuck-off scowl. Then he’s back to work, and she’s back to walking, _clomping_ down the street in her boots. Doesn’t give him another thought…certainly not later, when she’s singing about angels in church. There are no angels, not really, despite what her daddy used to say. And if there are, they sure as hell don’t work in tattoo parlors.

***

The following week she’s still alive, so that’s something. She tells herself she couldn’t leave Maggie like that - even though Maggie’s got her _fiancé_ , Glenn, now. Worst of all, Beth thinks she’s _afraid_ to try it again. Afraid of the pain, afraid of her legacy as a fucking loser suicide case, afraid of failing again. Afraid of succeeding.

A man with closely shorn hair and squinty eyes stands in front of the tattoo shop this time, smoking. He whistles under his breath as she approaches, calls her ‘darlin’’ and waggles his tongue at her…gross. When she doesn’t acknowledge him, he calls her a ‘stuck up bitch.’

For some reason that gives her pause, makes her stop and turn. “What did you call me?”

He holds his hands up in front of his chest. “Hoo, we got a badass here! Don’t stress little missy, I’m just playin’ with you.”

She wants to tell him she’s not what she looks like: she’s not some sweet blonde piece of fluff who only leaves the house to sing about Jesus. Later tonight she’ll be down at the bar like she is most nights, trying to drink away the image of her dad’s dead and broken body that she and her sister had to identify, and maybe when she goes home later she’ll take a razor blade to her wrist and make some teasing little scratches like she has been to ease the pain, or maybe she’ll cut a little deeper this time and put a stop to this waste of a life that someone a lot stronger than her should have lived. But all she can think to say is: “I’m not stuck up.”

“Obviously,” the man says. He has a strangely musical voice that turns his drawl into a kind-of purr. “Notice you don’t say you ain’t a bitch, though.”

He’s right, but Beth doesn’t mind being a bitch. It’s better than being a scared little girl.

“Why don’t you come inside, let my baby brother mark you up?” It sounds so _filthy_ the way he says it.

“No thank you,” Beth answers, turning away. She thinks she hears the man call her a stupid dyke as she walks off, but she’s not sure.

***

Insomnia or nightmares, flip a coin.

This night it’s insomnia, a restless kind that several slugs off the rum in her freezer do nothing to touch. She stares at her wrist and wishes she could just _change_ from the little girl that did _that_ into someone tougher – someone who would either wear that scar with pride or, well…finish the job.

The scar is ugly…thin, pale and raised. It’s not a battle scar, nothing cool like that. It’s a flesh wound. It’s acne. It’s stupid teenage angst made flesh like some lame tattoo, and just like that Beth has an idea.

She checks the Dixon Brothers’ hours online and then calls a cab. She shouldn’t drive after how much she’s had to drink.

***

The door jingles as she walks through. “That you, Merle?” A voice from a back room. “Thought you was off to blow your tips up your nose.” He sounds annoyed, and Beth guesses that even if he’s the ‘baby brother’, this Dixon is the more responsible of the two.

“Uh, hi?” She’s nervous, both because it’s close to their closing time and because she’s afraid he’ll smell rum on her breath, or take one look at her and laugh her right out of here. She’s never been in one of these places before: everything is black leather, red vinyl and naked women on the walls – some of them illustrations, some of them photographs of smiling girls showing off their new ink.

The man from the window that time walks out, stares at her warily. “I’d like to get a tattoo?” she says; God, why is everything coming out like a question? Beth has no idea what the hell she’s thinking, she’s just along for the ride at this point. _Is this going to be expensive,_ she thinks.

“Call and set up an appointment,” he growls.

“Your website said you were open till two. I can wait…”

“Didn’t say to wait, said to call back and make an appointment,” he reiterates. “I’ve been here all day takin’ my clients _and_ my asshole brother’s. I’m closing up here then I’m gonna go get shitfaced.”

For some reason, she feels like it has to be now or it will be never, and she _wants_ this. This is something the Beth Greene who cut her wrist with a piece of broken _mirror_ \- god, how dumb - just to make her family start talking about _her_ instead of her dead mom all those years ago would NEVER do. And just like that, she even knows what she wants.

“It’s something small, it’ll be real quick.” She puts a cute lilt in her voice, opens her already-large baby blues a little wider. “I can pay extra, Mr. Dixon. Then you can go get _extra_ shitfaced, what’dyou think?”

The man considers for a moment. “Extra?”

“Yeah. I mean, assuming it’s not going to be crazy expensive.”

He walks up to face her over the front counter. “What you want?” Close up, she can see he’s not as young as she previously thought – is probably only _Merle_ ’s junior by 10 years or so. Hardly a ‘baby’ brother, but still, something about how he carries himself makes him look younger than the lines around his eyes and the grey hairs in his beard suggest he is. He’s actually quite handsome: biker casual, bare arms, and surprisingly few visible tattoos for a tattoo artist.

Beth steels her nerve, holds out her left wrist. The scar is very prominent in the shop fluorescents.

“The word Change, right along here.” She draws her fingernail along the scar, like it’s an underline.

He searches her eyes for a second, then looks down at her wrist – encircles it with his own hand, rubs his thumb gently over the raised line.

“Right here?” he asks, quietly, and her eyes flutter a little as she nods her head. “Gonna hurt like a bitch,” he says. “This your first?” She nods instead of answering out loud, because his thumb is still rubbing slowly back and forth, back and forth over the tender skin of her scar. It’s been awhile since _any_ man touched her, and to have it be somewhere she normally keeps so hidden and private is shockingly intimate, and thrilling.

“Fifty bucks,” he says finally, releasing her wrist. Beth pays in cash.

***

He says his name is Daryl, and he sets up his equipment quietly while she fidgets in her chair. “Don’t I need to sign a waiver or something?”

“Thought you were in a hurry.” He looks at her as if he expects her to bolt at any second. “If you don’t trust me, you shouldn’t be getting inked by me. Simple as that.”

“It’s just…” She’s stalling, suddenly losing her nerve, maybe because she’s sobering up. “Every other tattoo shop, the guys you see always have them all up and down their arms.” Daryl holds his right hand up so she can see the tiny star on the back, between his thumb and forefinger. “That doesn’t count. How’m I supposed to know that you won’t puncture a vein or something if you don’t even do them on yourself?” She’s teasing, except she’s not.

He nods down at where her design’s going to go. “Looks like you did a fine job going after your veins yourself, what do you need me for?”

Heat rises in her cheeks. “Fuck you,” she spits, jumping to her feet to leave. This was a mistake.

“Wait,” Daryl says, standing with her. He seems to weigh something for a moment, then turns his back to her and pulls his sleeveless t-shirt up over his shoulders to bare his back. Beth sees two large tattooed demons. And scars. Lots of scars. “Didn’t do these myself obviously, but don’t want you thinking we don’t stand by our work.”

She can’t help it: she steps forward and runs her fingertip down one of the larger ones, and she sees gooseflesh rise on his skin, a little shiver pass through him. Just like how she felt when _he_ touched _her_ scar.

“What happened to you?” she asks, her voice thick and strange. The booze has shifted gears on her, and she thinks she might cry.

“My old man happened,” he answers, pulling his shirt down and turning back to face her. “What happened to _you_?” He nods down at her wrist, and now a tear does slip from her eye.

“ _I_ happened,” she says.

***

She tells him everything. About her parents, about the mirror and the razors, about the alcohol and insomnia.

“And ‘Change’, what’s that about?” He’s a good listener; Beth wonders if it’s a normal thing or something, for people to spill their guts to their tattoo artist, or if she’s just that obviously pathetic.

“I don’t want to be me anymore,” she admits. “I feel like I clock in when I wake up and clock out when I take a drink at night or when I start cutting. It’s like I’m already gone, here.” She puts her hand against her chest where her heart _should_ be, and laughs. “If I could just…change…maybe I would stop thinking about it. Start feeling something again.”

Daryl nods, then gets up and starts putting his equipment away. When she asks all he’ll say is “Ain’t gonna have your first tattoo be no damn death sentence. Come back tomorrow.”

***

She does.

***

He starts working on a small back piece for her, says he won’t charge her for it (beyond the fifty bucks she already paid – he keeps that) if she _promises_ not to ask what it is or even look at it in a mirror until it’s done. Beth can’t say why, but she trusts him, so she doesn’t. Besides, what else has she got to look forward to?

She drops out of the church choir, and her weekly ritual becomes stopping by to let Daryl work on her for hours at a time late at night either just before or just after the shop closes. It’s not a big surprise that she finds she absolutely _loves_ being tattooed…the sting, the endorphins, the forbidden thrill of just giving over your body to someone else. Especially when that someone is Daryl Dixon.

They talk here and there while she’s getting inked: about life, about parents gone but not forgotten – she sits there shirtless, her hair up in a ponytail, him behind her all business and rough hands unbelievably gentle against her skin, now and then bringing her a bottle of apple juice to sip on if she says she’s feeling faint. At some point she realizes she’s falling in love with him, but that’s to be expected she supposes. It’s probably something similar to Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe they’ll name a syndrome after _her_ : Greene Syndrome – the person who’s routinely physically hurting you is the one who turns you on.

The day he tells her it’s finally done and leads to her to a mirror to see, she thinks she might cry or throw up or something. She doesn’t want this to be over. She can’t imagine what he’s put on her. She wants an excuse to see him again.

Between her shoulder blades is a woman with red hair and blue tattoos on her breasts and thighs which are barely visible through her torn dress, straddling a horse with a sword held high in the air. When Beth looks at him questioningly, Daryl looks almost embarrassed. “Boudica,” he says, as if that explains everything. When he can see that she still has no idea what he’s tattooed on her, Daryl continues. “She was a Celtic queen who was whipped and raped along with her daughters by the Romans when her husband died. ‘Stead of just lying down and dying, she revolted and killed about 80,000 of the shitheads before they finally beat her. She was strong. She _lived_ with her scars.” He looks at her closely. “You gonna give up now, waste a hell of a lot of my hard work? Or you gonna revolt?”

***

They don’t even make it to a bed. She attacks him almost immediately and he kills the shop lights, locks the doors and fucks her on the front counter where anyone who might walk by at this time of night could see them. It’s rough and quick and sloppy and everything Beth could want – he pulls her leg up over his shoulder and his hand damn near fits all the way around her ankle; she leans back and knocks a pile of papers off the counter with scrabbling hands, and screams when she comes.

They share a cigarette after, and she goes home with him that night and nearly every night after. In Daryl’s arms, she discovers she can finally sleep.

***

She doesn’t ever get her Change tattoo (Daryl confesses later that he thought it was a pretty stupid design anyway), but she stops wearing bracelets and long sleeves to hide her scar. When her thoughts start to turn dark again, as they do sometimes, she takes it out in scratches down Daryl’s back, bite marks on his shoulders and rug burns on his knees, and he repays her in hickeys, hip-bone bruises on her inner thighs and angry red palm prints against her ass.

And in quieter moments, they kiss each other’s scars, tame each other’s demons and come out the other side nearly, but not quite, unscathed.


End file.
